Just finished “Hatching Twitter” by Nick Bilton. That is a good story full of twists, emotions and interesting conclusions one can draw from reading. The last pages left me unsettled though. You see, as Twitter was progressing from an early stage start-up to a multi billion corporation many contradictory decisions have been made by the people you have never probably heard of: investors, board members, executives of the company, celebrities - all tangled into the dance of power, fame and money. The whole story, as we know it now, could be called a huge success. And therefore, one could conclude that whatever they did everything was done right and with the best interest of the company in mind. Right?
Well, personally, I doubt that. I think that by being a great idea Twitter just absorbed all the damage caused by a thousand small cuts without failing completely, but losing its potential on each turn. Going through the story I couldn’t stop thinking how much better everything would be if all the people involved could just agree on the leadership, direction and strategy, talk their way through disagreements and focus on simply working and making the company better. It is stunning how much energy, resources and will power was lost on political games and organizing coups. It is a shame how little people calling the shots knew about the actual problems of the company and how resistant they were to dig into that knowledge. And it is a pity how much time has been lost because of incompetence, greed and stupid resentment caused by an ego.
Doesn’t really matter what your endeavor is, you have to solve a lot of puzzles and connect together a lot of dots in order to achieve anything significant. As you go, technical and financial issues are permanent and never ending. I don’t think one can ever have enough resources and time. Pressure has to be there to invite creativity. And in the background you have another set of time bombs ticking - people issues. Ambitions, struggles, insecurities - it's all yours. While you lead a group of people you always have a jungle of their traits and features which are all yours to discover and deal with.
Talented people are often too risk averse and short sighted for the cause. Or naive to the point of becoming a traitor out of some good intentions and missed perspectives. Some act maliciously out of boredom, while others stay away silent out of fear when it is time to raise their voice for what’s right. It is not rare too that skilled team members lack experience, while experienced veterans lack skills. Drive and willingness to walk another mile without an obvious carrot ahead is always a scarcity. And above all that, politics rules the matter. Who is right and who is wrong is considered only after it has already been determined who has the power to decide. Whatever balance exists at the moment, one should always remember that it is fragile, temporary and won’t last without deliberate effort to keep things in check.
That universal truth makes me sad and frustrated. When something important for you is being done you don’t want to miss a blow coming upwards as well as downwards. Especially, if it comes at the moment when it’ll be the hardest to handle. So, you have to hedge every risk. Which leads to plenty of the limited resources available spent on building a system of fallbacks and backtracks. If you are competent enough in what you’re doing, many rules can be ignored and some issues can be ruled out by brute force. But bad actors always have more time than those who are busy making and building things. Speaking from a pure first principles approach, that kinda makes sense. You are either busy doing or busy plotting. And it is hard to find a story when long time progress was not swallowed in the end by some well executed coup. Order always requires a strong will, and when one is out of gas and low on energy, entropy kicks in and takes everything over. So, the end of an amazing story of innovation and striving for the stars is always sad, ugly and uninspiring.
That is why the history of Twitter left me unsettled. I love building companies and products. I know how to arrange people to put great effort and walk farther than they could even imagine on their own without me. If there is one talent which can be attributed to me - that's it. I know how to survive and be efficient. And it was never about money for me. That is just my game. I’m built and shaped for it. But the probability of winning in this game is very low. And even if I gather enough skills, experience and resources to finally construct something great, most likely at the end of the road I’ll find myself tired and defeated, while the castle I put together is being taken over by some random con-artists and mercenaries I never invited. Any empire falls. Any building crumbles. Any universe awaits its Ragnarok. So, is it worth it? Why suffer and care at all? Well, that is a question I ask myself almost every day.
On the positive side of things, I don’t really have any better idea on what to do with my life. The world is designed in such a way that you’re either the one struggling or the one biting, unless you’re the one just waiting on a sideline and observing, which is a very boring place to be, IMHO. So, I prefer the former. Because, at the end of the day, one can make a good case that what Twitter history also teaches us is that any success is not final, and any failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.